


I know I'm not well (but I'm alright)

by ApatheticRobots



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, Nightmares, Post-Episode: s02e01 Scary-oke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:49:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27109789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApatheticRobots/pseuds/ApatheticRobots
Summary: ...What had hisbrotherdone?Well, first he’d tried to explain to Stan that his dreams weren’t real. Tried to explain the science of dreaming. Which just sounded like a lot of nonsense and didn’t actually help, so after that had failed he’d shrugged and said--“You wanna watch some TV?”
Relationships: Mabel Pines & Stan Pines
Comments: 3
Kudos: 58





	I know I'm not well (but I'm alright)

**Author's Note:**

> i dunno random plot bunny. gravity falls is still good. unbeta'd. title is from "Hard of Hearing" by Radical Face please listen to all of his music actually

The shack creaked a lot.

That was to be expected-- much like its (current) owner, it was old. It had been around for a while, poorly maintained the whole time, and needed a lot of TLC. Would likely never be in proper working condition again. Creaked a lot. Smelled weird. Man, that tabloid article he’d seen that one time in line at the grocery store about houses being like their owners really might’ve had some basis in reality. 

Anyways, his point was the shack creaked, and it had been doing so for the greater half of the last thirty years. Stan, who had been living there for just as long, had long since learned to recognize the difference between normal “this building is old and hasn’t been repaired in decades” creaks versus the “someone’s walking in here” creaks. Mostly because he was a lot less familiar with the latter, given how long he’d lived alone.

The latter, which were the sort he was hearing now, coming down the stairs.

His first thought was  _ intruder, grab a bat _ because years of living on the road in a state of constant paranoia and then living in a house in a state of constant paranoia didn’t go away just because one had a stable job and place to live. He actually found himself reaching for one of the many bats he kept hidden away (specifically the one under the recliner) before his senses, delayed as they may be, caught up with him and he took the time to actually  _ think. _ They were in the middle of the woods. It was more trouble to get up to this place than it was worth on a good day, in broad daylight and driving. It was dark out, and he hadn’t heard a car, nor had he heard glass shattering or the click of a lock, so the chances of it being someone breaking into the house were slim.

He kept the bat nearby anyways as he waited in silence. The creaking got to the bottom of the stairs, continued forward a little bit, then a small figure was illuminated in the doorway by the dim lamp he’d turned on.

“Grunkle Stan?” Mabel asked, squinting at him and rubbing her eyes. “What're you doin’ up?”

Not an intruder. He let his hold on the bat relax, carefully tucking it back into its place under his chair. He wasn’t quite ready to stop keeping them stored in every room in the house, but he didn’t need the kid wondering why he had it there. “Nothin’,” he said, leaning back and tilting his head. “What're  _ you _ doin’ up?”

Mabel shrugged, her usually exuberant movements now lackluster and drowsy. “Couldn’t sleep,” she said, crossing her arms. “Had a bad dream.” 

“Ah.” Those, at least, he was intimately familiar with. “Sorry to hear that, kiddo.” 

She nodded, rubbing at her upper arms. Shoot, he was supposed to do something else in this situation, wasn’t he? Be a good uncle, a good authority figure, try and help. But his dad had always just told him to suck it up and go away when he’d had a bad dream, and ma had tired to help by interpreting the dream, bless her heart, which usually just made it worse. So he didn’t exactly have a frame of reference for what he was supposed to be doing here.

“Wanna, uh,” he coughed into his fist, “talk about it?”

Mabel shook her head, staring at the carpet. Well darn, that was all he had under his belt, and he’d learned that from the TV. What was he supposed to  _ do?  _ There was no manual for this, or if there was their parents had neglected to lend it to him before sending the kids up here for the summer. She was just standing there looking sad as anything and he didn’t know what to  _ do. _

...What had his  _ brother _ done?

Well, first he’d tried to explain to Stan that his dreams weren’t real. Tried to explain the science of dreaming. Which just sounded like a lot of nonsense and didn’t actually help, so after that had failed he’d shrugged and said--

“You wanna watch some TV?”

She bit her lip, then nodded a couple times. He sat up in his recliner and gestured her over. Once she was within arm’s reach, he scooped her up around the middle and deposited her against his side. She was a little too heavy for it to be all that comfortable, but she was also snuggling into his side and grabbing at his shirt like her life depended on it, so he sure as hell wasn’t gonna tell her to go sit somewhere else.

He managed to grab the remote without dislodging her and turned the TV on. There was never really anything good playing, because this was Gravity Falls and literally only had the most nonsensical garbage on the local channels, but it was even worse late at night. There was a channel playing 24-hour horror movie marathons, which he quickly clicked off of, God knew she didn’t need anything else to scare her. There were multiple channels playing nothing but infomercials and paid programming, which were passive enough, but a little too exciting for so late.

Eventually he settled on reruns of I Love Lucy (that, he’d found over the years, could be guaranteed to be found playing on at least  _ one _ channel no matter where you were), and he set the remote down so he could wrap his arm around Mabel and pull her closer. She just shifted for a moment to scoot up, remove her knee from where it was pressing into his side, and rest her head against his chest.

It didn’t look like a very comfortable position to him, but then again, not much did these days. Young folks were always a lot more flexible. He’d seen Soos napping in some very strange positions over the years. (He’d once caught the kid asleep in the rafters, having been working on the lights, with his limbs hanging over the edges like a cat in a tree. He’d had a hell of a scare trying to get him down without either of them getting hurt.)

They sat in silence, neither of them really watching what was on TV but appreciating the background noise, and it wasn’t until several episodes later (and Stan almost falling asleep) that Mabel spoke up again. “Can I tell you about my dream now?” she asked, voice hardly a whisper, quiet enough that Stan almost didn’t hear.

_Shut up, Stanley, stop botherin’ me,_ said the echo of his father in his head. “Sure you can, pumpkin,” Stan said, because as much of a jerk as he could be, he would _never_ be like Filbrick.

Mabel nodded a couple times. “It was… Remember the party we had a little while ago? Where Dipper summoned a bunch’a zombies? And you told us about how you’d always known about all the crazy spooky stuff goin’ on around town?”

How could he forget? The cost of property damage would haunt  _ his _ dreams for years to come. “Sure I do. What about it?”

“Well,” Mabel said, tugging at a loose thread on his shirt, “I was back there, and me and Dipper were running from the zombies again. And one of the zombies caught Dipper, and it was about to bite him, only this time…”

“...This time?” he prompted.

She had her face pressed into his chest, but he could hear her loud and clear; “This time, you weren’t there to save us. Soos got caught, Dipper got caught, you weren’t there, and I was all alone. And I kept  _ running _ ‘cause I didn’t wanna get caught, but I kept hearing Dipper calling me and trying to get me to stop, but I knew it was ‘cause he wanted to eat me so I didn’t stop. Then I got up to the attic and I was trapped and I was so  _ scared-- _ ”

Her grip had tightened on his shirt enough that he could feel the prick of her nails, though he gracefully ignored it, because she was hyperventilating and he could practically feel her shaking, and he needed to fix this  _ right now. _

“Woah, hey, easy there, kiddo,” he said, carefully removing her hand from its death grip on his shirt and gently holding it instead. “Take a deep breath for me, okay?”

Mabel obliged, inhaling deeply and holding it for a moment before exhaling. Gradually, her panic subsided, her trembling ceased. He didn’t let go of her hand, though. And he kept his other arm cradled around her. 

“You okay?”

“Mhm,” she mumbled, nodding. “‘M okay. I don’t get nightmares really often. This one was just… bad.” She pulled her hand away from his so she could go back to picking at the loose thread. “...I hate being alone.”

He sure had a lot in common with this kid, didn’t he? Extroverts, the both of them. Part of why he did his job so well. “I know how y’ feel.”

“I’m always afraid Dipper’s gonna leave,” she said carefully, and he could tell just from her tone and the way she was fidgeting that she’d probably never admitted this to anyone before. “He’s so much smarter than me, and he’s always talking about all these plans he has for the future, but I don’t have any plans like that. I just kinda do whatever. And I’m worried that he’s gonna get accepted into some big fancy college and go off and do fancy smart guy things and forget about me.”

_ Damn he sure had a lot in common with this kid-- _ “Trust me,” he said, tone somber. “I get it.”

She looked up at him curiously. It was definitely a prompt, and if he had any less willpower he might’ve been inclined to tell her, but she was just a kid. She didn’t need some old fart unloading his emotional angst onto her. He wasn’t gonna be  _ that _ guy. 

“Just boring old man stuff,” he ruffled her hair, “don’t get you nightgown in a twist about it, okay? And hey. I know your brother, kiddo, and he doesn’t seem the sort.” Neither had Stanford, but that hadn’t stopped him. “He wouldn’t abandon you. From the looks of it, you’re stuck with him for life.”

“...Okay,” Mabel said, and Stan could tell she didn’t really believe him, but she let the issue drop anyways. She was silent for all of a minute before she spoke again; “D’ you ever get bad dreams, Grunkle Stan?”

Yes. Often. Usually about the same thing. A burning pain in his shoulder, blue light bright enough to sear his eyes, a hand reaching out and  _ Stanley! Stanley, do something!  _ and an explosion throwing him back and seeing his brother dragged away from him after he’d  _ just _ gotten him back. And knowing it was his own fault.

But like his earlier tragic backstory, he wasn’t gonna tell  _ her _ that. “I think everyone does, kiddo,” he said instead. 

“...Oh.”

“Oh?”

She shrugged. “I always thought that was something that stopped when you were a grown-up. Like losing teeth or having to take vitamins.” 

Stan snorted a laugh, ruffling her hair a couple times. “Kid, those things only stop for a little while. Sure, once you’re an adult you’ve got your full set of chompers an’ can get away with not having to take vitamins, but once you get to my age you start losing teeth and needin’ the extra nutrients again.” Not that he really ever took vitamins but Lord did he definitely need them. “S’just one great big circle, kiddo. Gettin’ old is just bein’ a kid all over again. People tryin’ t’ tell you what to do, not understanding what the hell anyone’s talkin’ about. Sittin’ on the couch watchin’ TV. Not havin’ a clue what you’re doing.”

That last one got her looking surprised. 

“What, you think adults are flying and less blind than you kids? We sure aren’t, and anyone who tries t’ tell you otherwise is lying. Life don’t suddenly start makin’ sense when you pass the eighteen mark, much as I wish it did.” 

“...Huh.”

Wait, was that one of those things he wasn’t supposed to tell kids? Like swear words or that Santa wasn’t real? They really needed to make a comprehensive list.

He could probably still save this. Probably. “So don’t worry if you’re ever out of your depth, kiddo. Chances are the grown-ups around you don’t have a clue what’s happening either.” That sounded like good advice. Certainly something he wished he’d been told when he was younger.

Mabel nodded, shuffling a bit so she could see the TV from her spot at his side.

“Hey, Grunkle Stan?”

“Yeah?”

“...Thanks.”

He really should’ve known his chances of staying neutral towards his extended family were in the trash as soon as he laid eyes on the kids. How the hell was he supposed to act like he didn’t care when they went and did stuff like  _ that? _

He could’ve brushed her off, if he really wanted to. Could’ve saved face.

But eh, what the hell, he was old. And creaky. What did he have to lose?

“No problem, pumpkin. Glad I could help.” 

He pulled her close again, and she tucked her head against his shoulder. The shack was warm, and quiet, and the TV playing in the background made a nice white noise. And Stan was old. So when Mabel’s breathing evened out and she fell asleep there and then, he wasn’t far behind.

(And when Dipper found them like that in the morning, still curled up in the armchair in a way that would definitely be hell on Stan’s back when he woke up, he had the tact not to say anything about it.)


End file.
